Red
by VulcanElf
Summary: After Meteor, Vincent Valentine doesn't know what to do with himself. He tries to figure out what he should be doing with his life, instead discovering he is exactly the kind of monster heroes are supposed to destroy. 2009 Genesis Award runner up.


This fic is my response to a challenge issued to me several months ago by my devious friend Pen Against Sword. Even though I loved the terms of the challenge and was excited about diving in to the idea I had almost immediately, it took forever to make myself write it. For some reason, I just found it really difficult to get into the proper head-space. But that is all irrelevant. What is important is that I think I met the terms, and am happy to have done it.

My sincerest thanks go to Mengde for making me write this when I was being whiny about how hard it was, and for telling me in no uncertain terms that it wasn't done when I thought it was. Without him, this story would never have been written, and would have sucked if it had.

Anyway, on to the show!

* * *

The problem with quests, built-in from the moment they are conceived, is that they end. There comes a moment, either of transcendent triumph or ultimate failure, then it's all over.

And then what?

Vincent Valentine did not know where to go after the final fight with Sephiroth in the northern reaches. The others… they all had something to go back to. Some kind of life they could at least try to reclaim, or rebuild. He had nothing.

None of them tried to drag him along to what remained of their homes in the wake of whatever it was the eight of them had just shared, and he was grateful for that. Not even the loud, uncontainable girl who would neither stop staring at him nor look him in the eye. Apparently she hadn't the courage or audacity or desire to lay claim to his time. They all just melted away and disappeared, more scenery in the fading backdrop of his pathetic past.

If a man has lost everything – lost his family, his past, his identity and ideals, the entire life he has built, his _hope_ – then what does he have to go back to, when the quest is done? Vincent had been refusing to ask himself any such question while traveling with Cloud, while blinded by hate and seeking his revenge against the doctor who had done so much wrong to so many people. He had instead been allowing that hate to drive him, to fuel him, to give him purpose and life because without it…

Without it, he was a ghost. He didn't even exist anymore, really. He drifted across the continents, waiting for something to happen.

It didn't help that the rest of the world seemed to be suffering a similar loss of purpose and direction. Everywhere Vincent traveled after leaving his temporary companions, he found people trying and mostly failing to pretend they knew how to carry on now that everything had changed. He found a world that didn't know what to do with itself anymore, whole cities destroyed or abandoned or futilely grasping at survival on a planet that clearly didn't want them to make it.

As for what Vincent wanted, or expected, or dared to dream in this new reality… No. He could think of nothing that mattered enough for him to care about it.

The woman he had loved was gone, as was the son she had destroyed herself to bring into being, and Vincent had already let loose the rage he felt at that – upon the man responsible. He had none of it left. He had torn his claws into Hojo's living flesh, screaming his pain in Chaos' voice, while his companions watched in horror. He had reveled in the brutality for the first time in his life; and for many reasons, it now seemed to him that his life had no further meaning.

Vincent was a relic, remnant of a time from which he could imagine the world was desperate to distance itself. Beyond that, he was a monster. A stranger in his own body, but also a devil in his mind in a way that had nothing to do with Hojo's ghastly alterations. It was the role of heroes to hunt down and eradicate creatures like him.

And yet, they had drifted off and left him to himself, sans eradication. Maybe as nominal compensation for the part he had played in trying to "save the world." Or maybe – and more likely – as punishment of the cruelest kind and well deserved. The _last_ person on the planet Vincent would have chosen to be alone with was himself.

He waited, he traveled, and he watched. Whatever he thought might happen, it didn't. Especially nothing to bring him back from un-death. He was not properly alive, not as disconnected as he was from these people and their extremes of passion.

They didn't want him, either. Anywhere he lingered too long, the locals grew suspicious and apprehensive, and there was no good reason why they should not be. It was obvious that he belonged nowhere, was needed by no-one, cared about nothing. He was a monster, and Hojo had made sure anyone could see that now when they looked at him.

Vincent Valentine was in some kind of horrible limbo, neither alive nor dead. It was a hell of his own making. And even though he knew he deserved it, he was bitter.

It was in the frigid north that he found his steps leading him into a wretched, poorly-lit bar of ill repute. Seemed like the right kind of place for the sort of man he had become.

Man… Vincent had to sneer hatefully at himself at the very thought that he was still anything like a man. Whatever he now was, he was no longer human; and he had stopped being a man even before he died like a fool for a woman he had meant nothing to. Any claim to manhood he might once have had, he had probably surrendered the day he first set foot into that damn mansion – if not before that, as a murdering Shinra dog.

Alone with himself, with his memories, Vincent could not stop them from coming. From one phase of his life to the next, they were all horrific if for different reasons. For one thing, they all featured him. Him and his ugly nature and his tendency to make choices that hurt people.

"This damn cold, huh?" the proprietor observed with a rueful headshake as Vincent hunched his way up onto a stool at the bar.

If it was cold, Vincent hadn't noticed. He was unaware of the cold now. The thought let loose what felt like a small fountain of red rage in his chest. Not a man, not actually alive, not even allowed to feel the reality of the elements anymore. Just a monster, a real one now and not merely the monstrous human he always had been.

He called for a bottle of the strongest alcohol on the premises and did his best to kill his damnably photographic memory for as long as the drink would allow.

Only, it soon became clear that no such thing would be happening.

It was true that Vincent had never been anything like a lightweight, despite his deceptively slight build. He would have been the butt of so many Turk jokes and hazings, if that were the case. He had always been able to put down his fair share, enough to escape notice on nights out, but he did have a limit and he had always been careful never to push past that. Except that now, this one foul afternoon in this unpleasant bar in the ass end of nowhere, he found himself shaking the last lonely drops out of the bottle before it occurred to him that he wasn't even buzzed yet.

The barkeeper was trying to look like he wasn't watching Vincent suspiciously out of the corner of his eye while pulling a mug of beer for another customer. Vincent didn't like the look, didn't like the fact that he had just put away an entire bottle of ardent spirits with no effect whatsoever, didn't like the way he was feeling right now, and _definitely_ didn't like being cheated. He slammed the rest of the liquor and glared until he had the barman's full attention.

"Tell me," Vincent growled quietly, his mood swiftly taking a bad turn, "are you in the habit of robbing all your customers, or just those from out of town?"

"What the hell you talkin' about?" the barkeeper replied, though not with as much attitude as he would have directed at a less deadly-looking patron. "If you're gonna turn into one o' them ragey drunks, you can just get out now and make trouble somewhere else."

Vincent put his armored hand on the counter and leaned forward ever so slightly, just enough to imply the threat he wanted it to. "I am not drunk," he informed the man with great precision. "Maybe you can see why this would be a problem for me, after having wasted my time on a bottle of what was supposed to be your hardest stock. If I wanted brown pisswater, I certainly wouldn't have paid you good money for it."

The bartender's face turned a fascinating, mottled shade of purple. "Brown water? Just what kind of place do you think I run here, pal?" In clear defiance of his better judgment, the man pulled down another bottle and slammed it down onto the bar in reach of Vincent's clawed left hand. "On the house, _sir_. Don't go getting smashed out of your head, now."

He didn't. Even after a second bottle – and pouring some of it across a rather nasty gash he gave himself down the length of his forearm, just to be certain of the alcohol sting – Vincent was still stone cold sober. Sober to his bones and growing angrier by the minute.

_What the hell is this?_ he had to ask himself bleakly._ What _am_ I? _

Frustrated and even maybe a little frightened by this new nonsensical shape of his reality, and hating himself intensely, Vincent disappeared into the snow-swirled darkness outside the bar. Now that he had started this, he felt a morbid need to satisfy his curiosity and see it through. He found the nearest open store and bought himself more alcohol than the clerk felt comfortable selling him, and hauled it all back to the mountain cave that was the only hotel room he had allowed himself. Then he did the same thing at every other store in town.

Vincent knew perfectly well how stupid this was. He was under no illusions that this was anything other than a self-indulgent and self-destructive act of maudlin lunacy. He also did not care. He made a small fire and took stock of the supplies he had gathered.

What was the worst that could happen? Dying? So the hell what.

It was simply a fact, and not any kind of self-pitying platitude, that he had nothing in the world to stay alive for.

Carefully, with the methodical precision that had earned him both respect and derision as a Turk, he started to work on his massive stockpile of potable poison.

Some time after Vincent had definitely consumed enough hard alcohol to kill a normal man, he wondered if he would sooner drown from all the drinking than earn himself an actual buzz. He found himself smiling darkly at the thought, then laughing with no one to hear how little mirth there was in the sound.

The trouble was, drinking without getting drunk, and then thinking to himself how impossible it was that he wasn't drunk and having to face the reasons for it – it only made him feel worse and made him wish even more desperately to escape his own skull. _They_ were laughing at him, too. The other voices, the ones he only wished were his imagination. The clearer it became that nothing was going to dull the pain, the more amusing they found his suffering.

They started telling him things, mocking him as they did so. Offering suggestions – ways he could make himself feel better. All of them involved hurting others. A part of him wanted to. And they knew it.

Desperation came and went, and came again, and with its passage opened a doorway to an even deeper kind of unfulfillable need that was beyond any definition. Vincent felt a raw anguish somewhere inside, whether in his head or his soul or the wrong side of his skin or the very molecules that made up his being it was impossible to tell.

It was like the worst kind of inaccessible itch, like a hunger that could never be sated, like continuing to endure a pain so intense and persistent and nauseating it should bring unconsciousness but somehow never does. The more he drank, pushing that bitter, corrosive venom down his throat without the mercy of even a single clouded memory or dulled regret, the more he _needed_ the oblivion that would not come. And that need, part for part, amplified each agonized stab of continued awareness.

As dawn slithered its pale tendrils into Vincent's secluded cave, and he stood surveying the carnage he had wrought in empty glass bottles and aluminum cans, he felt loathing settle over his shoulders like a second cloak. The weight of it pulled him to his knees.

_What _am_ I? Who am I? Why am I still alive? What am I supposed to do with a second chance where I'm not even myself anymore, not even human? _

He wanted to listen to the voices. He wanted to see blood, and hear screaming, and know that he was not the only person in the world who had to suffer. He felt that at least, that way, he would never again question who or what he was – and that it would not be long, certainly, before some hero came along to save the world from him too.

But no. No. No, no, no, _no_. Damn it, no. No matter what he had become, no matter how low he had fallen, he was not going to be _that_. He could not. Once upon a time, he had been someone's son, a bright and curious boy with a future ahead of him and so much promise. He had dreamed dreams of greatness, had loved, had been loved. It had all gone wrong of course – he knew, had always known, he had made a terrible mistake in going to work for Shinra – but he had not always been _this_. As wretched as he now found himself, as lost and broken and bitter, he could not become the agent of death and destruction that the other voices wanted him to be.

He would sooner die.

As soon as the thought came to him, he knew he had no other choice. They would win, eventually. The voices. The… he didn't know what they were, really. What to call them.

Whatever Hojo had done to him in that dungeon of a lab, these _things_ that took hold of him now sometimes, they weren't just shapes he could assume. They were actual monsters – sentient, independent entities – and they were inside him somewhere, and they each had their own thoughts and feelings. No, not feelings. That wasn't quite right. More like _drives. _Needs.

Most of the time, Vincent was able to tell the difference between their ideas and his own, but not always. He couldn't help but feel that maybe there wasn't always a difference to be discerned. That maybe he was becoming whatever it was they were. That maybe the day would come when there would no longer be anything left of Vincent Valentine the unfortunate human, and all that would remain in his twisted shell would be a dark amalgamation of everything that was most hateful about the many wills battling his for supremacy.

He could not allow that. This had to end. For so many reasons, not least of which the fact that he knew what lurked inside of him fighting to escape, it had to end.

There was nothing to be gained by putting it off. He had no goodbyes to make – none that mattered. And he had ample tools on hand. Vincent knew very well how to end a life, had done so many times in many ways. He picked up the nearest glass bottle and broke it against the stone floor of the cave that would serve as his tomb. Almost in the same heartbeat, he drew the sharp, jagged edge across his throat from left to right with clean, professional precision. He allowed himself to collapse in an untidy heap of mortality as the deeply red blood gushed from his severed artery onto the cold grey rock.

It didn't take long for his vision to go to blackness. He wasn't even able to feel relief, not even then. He was still Vincent Valentine as his awareness faded to nothing, and it was not a pleasant thing to be.

* * *

Naturally, waking up was the last thing Vincent had expected to do after taking his own life. He was unhappy when that was what happened.

It took him a while to get his bearings – understandable, given that he was quite certain he had just given himself a fatal wound that could not have led to anything other than death. He shifted his head on the hard stone cave-floor and felt his hair sticking in the pool of drying blood. His throat hurt like all hell. It was dark, both inside the cave and out. His new, unnatural night vision was able to pick out most of the details around him: the tumbled mass of empty bottles of alcohol, the spent remains of his small fire, tiny stars of snow gusting in from the cave mouth, the slick wetness of a river of more blood than a novice would think the human body could contain.

Vincent was not a novice. He knew that he ought to be dead.

He tried moving some more. It hurt, and he was weak. He did it anyway, dragging his mostly unresponsive body into a sitting position, then lifting a trembling hand to his throat. The wound was already closed – healing, and fast. A chill rocked his body so deeply it might as well have originated in the Underworld.

_I should be dead._

He was shivering now, and not from the cold. He could hear his own heartbeat, slow and strong and almost sullen, pumping god only knew what through his veins, and it was possibly the most terrifying sound Vincent had ever heard.

_Why am I still alive?_

It wasn't until he realized that he could still hear the echoes receding into the depths of the cave that he understood he had shouted the question aloud. His throat burned. He could practically _feel_ it healing.

Vincent pushed himself to his feet, swayed there a moment. He stumbled out into the night beneath a sky that couldn't decide whether to be clear or cloudy; and he had no idea what he was or what to do with himself. In the past, as a hired killer, he had answered most of the hard questions with the barrel of his gun. This didn't seem like any time to change that. The weapon was in his hand even before he had decided to draw it.

A bullet to the brain should do it. He couldn't heal what wasn't there to be healed, could he?

He pulled the trigger without hesitation.

* * *

Not a severed carotid, not an exploded brain pan, not drowning, exposure, starvation, poison, stabbing, bullets, throwing himself from a great height – Nothing Vincent tried brought death. Every time, he would wake up some time later in a puddle of his own blood, in very great pain, but also very much alive and increasingly angry. He made an attempt to dig out his own heart, but he passed out before he could manage it; and by the time he woke up again, the wound was mostly healed.

He tracked down the most fearsome monster he knew how to find, with the intention of letting it tear him apart and eat him if it wanted to. The last thing he knew, the Stilva was punching its spear-like legs through his chest while screeching hungry murder and he was certain he was about to finally meet his end. But then he woke again, and the thing was in pieces – badly burned and showing evidence of claw-marks that Vincent already knew to identify as the Galian Beast's.

Apparently, nothing he did would allow him to take his own life. There were no words for the depth of his frustration.

It had grown to be a matter of curiosity now, of the most macabre sort. Where before Vincent had traveled the planet protecting the innocent from the shadows, now his steps carried him on a never-ending quest to discover each and every method of _not dying_ the world had to offer him. He kept hoping he would find mercy just once. But every time he woke in a new kind of pain, in a fresh lake of his own blood, he felt less human.

And hated himself more.

If he had traveled less, or more, maybe they would not have been able to find him eventually. Vincent debated the question as he stood before the airship captain who had caught him skulking in Rocket Town, and tried not to hear the invitation being shouted at him congenially.

"'m gettin' married, dammit, and you're gonna be there if I have to kick your sad ass down the aisle my damn self. You got that? If _I_ can't get out of this mess, neither can you, asshole!"

Arguing would have taken more effort than Vincent cared to put in. He showed up on the appointed day, though he didn't bother to dress appropriately or to pretend that he wanted to talk to any of these people. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered. He couldn't die, and he wasn't alive; and one day his control was going to snap and he would kill a _lot_ of people, and there was nothing he could do about it.

The wedding was a short one, and the bride probably looked beautiful. She certainly looked happy – a fact that did nothing at all to improve Vincent's now permanently black mood. In fact, they all looked happy, or at least happy _for_ Cid and Shera. The reception afterward was larger and more boisterous and for many additional reasons even more intolerable than the ceremony itself. There was some kind of incident with Barret and Barret's rented tuxedo that had the group laughing to the point of tears for a long time.

Vincent took the opportunity to escape into the only thing like a dark corner in the airship hangar that was serving as reception hall for the occasion. It happened to be in the vicinity of the bar. He stared at the bottles clinking from shelf to counter to glass rim and back again, and at the stream of people smiling and laughing and quickly losing their anxieties under the alcohol's soothing influence, and he felt a red knot of something hot and lethal building inside his chest.

_What am I doing here?_ he wondered, angry at himself._ I don't belong, in any sense of the word._

He must have been glowering, because Tifa approached him shyly and offered a nervous giggle before saying, "Cheer up, Vincent. It can't be _that_ bad."

There had never been a time in Vincent's life when he had _not_ hated people who said such things to him. He was even less inclined to put up with it now, regardless of who she was or where they were. But he pushed his irritation back before it could lash out at her, shoved it down to merge with that burning red mass of rage and discontentment he could feel taking shape inside him.

The kind-hearted fighter glanced at him out of the corner of her warm brown eyes and seemed frightened by whatever it was she saw. Still, she tried another smile, accompanying this one with a gentle hand on his leather-clad forearm. "You look like you've been having a rough time lately," she fished. "Well, I guess we all have. But you don't look well, Vincent. Is there… is there anything I can do? To help?"

_Kill me._

The words had almost escaped him, but he stopped himself in time. Instead, he glared at her with eyes that he knew for a fact were too intensely frightening to look into for long. Sure enough, her eyelashes soon fluttered down to rest on the soft curve of her cheekbone and she glanced away.

"You're really not the only one who's had it hard since Meteor," Tifa informed him with some spirit, even though she wasn't able to meet his gaze any longer. She pretended like she was surveying the crowd on purpose. "We're all kind of lost. And Cloud –"

"Tifa," he interrupted. He could feel the muscles in his jaw leaping and dancing, a voice in his head that might have been his own telling him that he wanted nothing more at the moment than to rake his armored gauntlet across the woman's face if it would stop her from talking. She darted another glance in his direction but didn't keep it on him for long. "Leave. Just walk away."

She seemed to be at a momentary loss. He tried to encourage her to make a quick decision by turning himself toward her fully, so she could see what was in his face.

"Oh, Vincent, _really_," she huffed at him, scowling. But she made the wise move and retreated back into the general crowd.

Even though he hoped there would be no repercussions, he was smart enough to know that was too much to ask for. A part of his brain began to run calculations, trying to figure his chances of death if he turned feral here in front of the old team. It was possible they could take him. He wasn't sure if it was enough of a certainty to warrant giving it a try. He spent the better part of an hour trying to come to an answer to that.

"What the hell's your problem?" a rough voice demanded at his elbow.

Vincent sighed and turned to deal with this newest headache. At least it was only Cid, not the blushing bride too. The airship pilot's glare was fit to match Vincent's, and something about the fact that he was in a tuxedo only made it worse.

"I don't have a problem," Vincent muttered, folding his arms across his chest. "My sincere congratulations to you and your bride on this –" he found himself sneering – "happiest of occasions."

"I oughtta lay you flat right now and get this shit over with," Cid growled. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it up with practiced ease, and to Vincent's observant eye it was clear that he had just needed something to do with his hands. "What the hell do you think you're doing, scaring poor Tifa like that? Knew it was a mistake to let you come. You're just a sadsack piece of week-old dogshit as a friend, Valentine. That goddamn Shera, tellin' me I had to be all _polite._"

_Let_ him come? Like it was an act of pity? Cid was not the only one who felt that violence was in order. That red knot seemed to be burning a hole in his chest. Vincent dug the talons of his gauntlet into his own forearm and tried hard not to say anything.

Cid grabbed him by the shoulder, his tobacco-stained teeth bared in a grimace. "Listen, this is my weddin' day – and if Shera ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. She saw the way you treated Tifa, and she didn't like it one little bit." He gestured somewhat obscenely in the direction of the open bar. "Why don't you just do yourself a favor and lighten up before I do it _for _you by knocking your goddamn teeth out of your skull? We're tryin' to have a good time here. Get yourself a fuckin' drink, cheer the fuck up, and stop bein' such a Pussy Queen."

Vincent snapped.

It was like an explosion, a great percussive blast of hot rage so intense that it obliterated all rational thought, all sensation in his body, all awareness of where he was – blinding him as though a blood-red shroud had just descended over his eyes. All of the thwarted hope, the frustration, the despair and self-hatred and pain he had suffered in the last year congealed inside of him and morphed into a fury more intense and deadly than any Fire spell he had ever cast in his life.

Unaware of his own words, his own actions, Vincent turned on Cid with a snarl and seized the startled groom by two fistfuls of tuxedo. "HAVE A DRINK?" he roared. There was little of his own voice in the words, the sound coming out more like the mangled attempt the Galian Beast would have made of speech if he ever tried it.

The music had stopped. All talking had stopped. The hangar was dead silent but for the sawing of Cid's breath and the receding echo of Vincent's roar. Every face in the building was turned toward the two of them, a uniform backdrop of shock and horror.

"YOU WANT ME TO HAVE A DRINK? FINE. I'LL DRINK. WATCH IT CHEER ME UP."

Vincent literally picked the airship pilot up off his feet and threw him at the bar, following with inhuman speed. The man working the bar ducked hastily, then stumbled out of the way in obvious fear for his life. Glaring down at Cid – who was still stunned from the impact and had not yet started to try getting to his feet – Vincent picked up the nearest full glass of whatever and threw it back. In a matter of seconds, he had drained the bottle it had been poured from. He broke the neck of another and drank that too before throwing the bottle in Cid's general direction. There was a sound of breaking glass, and a sudden sheet of flames roared up as spilled alcohol hit the cigarette that had been knocked out of Cid's mouth. Someone screamed. People started moving fast to do something about the fire.

"IS THIS BETTER?" Vincent demanded. "DO I SEEM MORE RELAXED TO YOU?" Vincent broke and drank another bottle, then moved on to another, ignoring the fire. He was still shouting things, but they had ceased to make any kind of sense. He was too angry to know the difference, burning up inside and seeing red.

"Hey, Vince."

Vincent's senses surfaced from the frenzy of his rage too late to notice that Cid had climbed to his feet and had come around the bar to within arm's length of the gunman. The shorter man's fist was smashing into Vincent's jaw with an audible crunch of bone before anyone could do or say anything about it.

If Vincent had been in his right mind, the blow probably would have felled him. Enraged as he was, he hardly felt it. But it was enough to snap his vision back into focus.

Just in time to see the bloodied fist as it connected with his eye socket.

That one rattled his brain inside his skull enough to knock him down. Head spinning, his thoughts a painfully chaotic jumble, Vincent stayed down. There was a flurry of action behind the bar as the fire was brought under control and then extinguished.

"Holy shit!" said a voice Vincent knew he would recognize if his brain was functioning properly. "Cid! Vincent! What the hell –?"

Cid stood looking down at his handiwork for a moment, pleased with himself but pissed off anyway. There was blood on his face, leaking from a gash in his eyebrow, and his tuxedo was torn in several places. "And people say _I_ got no manners. Fuck."

Shera materialized at his side with a clean handkerchief and starting dabbing at his bleeding eyebrow while murmuring soothing words. Cid shook his head at Vincent one last time. "Get over yourself, you goddamn princess. Not everything's about you." He snatched the handkerchief out of his wife's hands and threw it into Vincent's face before stalking away.

"Let's get some music back on in here, people! Hell, is this a party or what?" the captain yelled as he receded into the crowd.

None of the wedding guests seemed quite sure what they were supposed to do. Some hovered around Vincent as though to offer help or to restrain him, but no one actually approached him. Not that he was terribly surprised. He could only imagine what he must look like right now.

Vincent climbed to his feet and looked around at the damage he had caused. The rage was gone, somehow, as if it had been consumed in the sudden, brief fire. Now a wave of shame threatened to drag him down into a different kind of despondency. The pain hit him at the same time, and he knew without checking that his jaw was broken and that he had a concussion.

At least he wasn't drunk.

He saw Cloud frowning at him in disappointment from a distance; then he caught a glimpse of the girl from Wutai staring at him with enormous eyes. For some reason, that was too much. His need to apologize, to make amends, was overwhelmed by humiliation. He gathered the torn hem of his red cloak and slipped out into the night before anyone had moved to stop him.

Running away was the only thing Vincent felt he had the right to do anymore.

* * *

It was a long time before Vincent was able to think clearly again. Hours or days or maybe even weeks – he didn't know, and it wasn't like it really mattered. He huddled in the gently luminescent darkness of a certain cavern close to Nibelheim, and tried to let the calm sorrow of the place tame him into a sense of peace.

The image of the beautiful woman frozen forever in Mako crystal seemed to embody everything Vincent most regretted. She floated there in eternal silence, a judgment against him and his failures.

He had really screwed things up.

When he thought back over the way he had been spending his time since Meteor, he hated himself from an entirely new angle. Cid was right: he had been coarse and conceited, wallowing in self-pity. But the more he thought about it, the more he realized that was no different from the way he had always behaved. His father had tried to tell him so more than once, but Vincent had been too much the spoiled, selfish brat to care.

So, he could not die. His body might as well have belonged to a stranger, as well as he knew it now. He had monsters inside of him, and a temper he wasn't exactly in control of. He had made mistakes, had failed people who were counting on him, had brought himself a new world of troubles he might never learn to manage. These were facts. Prowling the planet with an attitude and a death wish would not help any of that. Neither would crying about it into a bottle of alcohol, even if it _could_ get him intoxicated.

Things were different now. Vincent realized he had to accept that, and that he had to be different too. Of course, he had been such a bastard for so long that he had no idea how to go about it. If the quest now was going to be atoning for all he had failed to do and to be, and for all the pain and suffering he had authored, it was a path that would never have an end. Still, this was a step. He had to consider it a step.

But first he had to make himself walk the path, and keep walking.


End file.
